Dear Community,
I have safely arrived in Alamosa and started my first week of work! It has been a full first week, and I have already felt the learning curve of entering into a new community and culture. Below I will give a small overview of the many delights and discoveries of my first week! It is hard to put into words how it feels to be in the San Luis Valley. The skies here are endless and blue, and I find myself staring out the car window at the purple sage scrub and the tiny yellow sunflowers that line the highways cutting through the valley. I saw a pamphlet in a small cafe, entitled - “The Mystic Valley” and I cannot think of a better way to describe the land here. While I adore and find myself at home in the richness and density of urban life, I have been struck by the simplicity and groundedness of life in a rural agricultural community.
One of my intentions for this year is to embrace the Mennonite hermeneutic of obedience1. Whilst I enjoy the intellectual and philosophical, I can neglect nurturing the embodied/material. In Alamosa, I am becoming more attuned to these material realities as in this community the practical is valued over the intellectual. I also seek an integration of the Mystical2 and theological with the practical. A line from a book I am reading has struck me anew - “Be mindful and remember that every moment can be a prayer.”
The altitude here (7500ft above sea level) means that I often struggle for breath after climbing stairs or riding my bike. While challenging, I also think of it as a spiritual practice. Dan Snyder writes that “every out-breath rehearses the final breath of death and every in-breath remembers the first breath of life.”3
As I huff and puff my way around the valley, I am comforted by the fact that the loving God who was with me in my first intake of breath, will surely hold me as I take my last(and let me tell you, a two-mile bike ride has brought me close!).
I am also learning to be more aware of my connection to the environment. Many people working in the Valley are connected to the land and water in ways I am unfamiliar with. On my first drive into the Valley, I received a crash course on some of Colorado’s ecology, spotting tiny wild sunflowers, quaking aspen, and learning which trees grow at different elevations. Access to water is essential and precarious. The quality of rivers, the refilling of aquifers, and the dangers of drought are all challenges facing farmers in the San Luis Valley. I quickly learned that “six inches of rain” means a drop of rain every six inches.
The sermon at church this past Sunday was on the story of Cain and Abel. After Cain murders his brother, he protests to God - “Am I my brother’s keeper?” This story struck me anew this week. At the Center for Restorative Programs our work is an answer to this question. Yes! We are our brothers and sisters’ keepers. When I sit in an intake interview with our participants we ask these questions:
How did your actions affect you?
How did your actions affect your family?
How did your actions affect your community?
What can be done to repair these relationships and make the situation right?
These are questions for all of us. MLK describes each of us as intertwined in a garment of destiny, our lives inextricably connected. Our decisions, whether they break the law or not, affect others. Returning to the story of Cain and Abel, it is the ground that cries out over the blood that is spilled. Here in the Valley it is clear that the relationships between people and the land are inextricably intertwined. When there is conflict over water rights, marginalized people further down the river lose their livelihoods. When there is a crime committed, it is not just the immediate perpetrator and victim who feel the effects - it ripples into the surrounding community. Families are thrown off kilter by the arrest of an eldest brother. An underage drinking conviction can interrupt the path out of poverty for a first-gen college student.
As I begin work with participants of CRP’s programming I am convicted of the way my actions, words, decisions can ripple out and affect others. I am impressed by the way our participants engage in meaningful self reflection, and I am energized by the reconciliation that happens between people who have harmed others, and those that have been harmed. I resonate with the rich language in Isaiah 58:12
“Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins; You will raise up the age-old foundations; And you will be called the repairer of the breach, The restorer of the streets in which to dwell.”
Each day I get to watch our participants become repairers of the breach, restoring the streets of their community.
In summary, my first week in Alamosa has been intensely educational. My classroom has been the small trail by the Rio Grand River, garter snakes darting into the undergrowth. The elevation, the farmers, the mayflies, and steep sand dunes have been my teachers. I invite you to take breaths with me; may each moment be a prayer. May we rejoice in our physical bodies and the land that sustains us, and may we learn to be repairers of the breach in our own homes and communities.
Hermeneutic is a fancy word for how we interpret texts like the Bible. I learned this concept from the book “Untrustworthy” by Bonnie Kristian. She writes, “It was in that context [religious persecution] that Anabaptists began to speak of the hermeneutic of obedience. The idea is simple but bracing: we gain understanding of scripture when we are prepared to obey it. ... We will struggle to understand the truth if we’re unwilling to bend our lives to its authority.
Mystical here references the rich Christian Tradition of mystics like Thomas A Kempis, Julian of Norwich, and Howard Thurman.
Snyder, Daniel O. Praying in the Dark: Spirituality, Nonviolence, and the Emerging World. Cascade Books, 2022, pp. 28.